Some of the environmental impacts from building the coal terminal would have included:

filling 24 acres of wetlands,

dredging 41.5 acres of the Columbia riverbed,

installing 537 pilings in the river for a new trestle and docks.

This complex project, if built, would have moved 44 million metric tons of coal annually. Coal would have been piled eight stories high and 50 football fields wide at the site.

To carry coal overseas, 1,680 new vessel transits would have been added to the Columbia River, accounting for a quarter of all traffic on the river.

To carry coal to the terminal, 16 slow-moving, 1.3-mile-long trains would have passed through Cowlitz County daily. This would have compounded already significant traffic congestion during peak commute times and affected emergency responders.

Eight of those 16 trains would have been fully loaded with coal traveling west along the Columbia River and would have delayed tribes’ access to fishing sites above Bonneville Dam.

The coal terminal also would have increased diesel pollution, a toxic air pollutant, and caused an unavoidable increase in cancer risk rates in a neighborhood along the rail line in Longview.